(Las Vegas, NV) – The Wyoming Cowgirl basketball team continues its road swing to begin Mountain West play and closes out the year 2021 in a 3 p.m., Mountain Time contest Friday, December 31 at UNLV.
Friday’s game will be broadcast live on the Mountain West Network. Fans can also listen to the contest across all 25 stations on the Cowgirl Radio Network with Keith Kelley on the call.
A LOOK AT THE COWGIRLS
Wyoming (5-5, 1-0 MW) opened league play with an impressive 62-54 victory over San Diego State Tuesday on the road. The Cowgirls led by as many as 21 points in the fourth quarter before hanging on down the stretch to open MW play 1-0.
Allyson Fertig and Alba Sanchez Ramos became the first set of Cowgirl teammates to record a double-double in the same game since March of 2019 when Bailee Cotton and Marta Gomez accomplished the feat. Sanchez Ramos scored 15 points and tied a career-high by grabbing 13 rebounds in the win while Fertig scored 12 points and grabbed 12 boards. Since being inserted into the starting lineup, the last three games Fertig is leading the Cowgirls in scoring at 13.3 points per game on 50-percent shooting while she is second on the squad with 8.3 rebounds per contest.
Quinn Weidemann also scored 15 points in the win over the Aztecs and hit a trio of 3-pointers and is now ninth all-time in program history with 159 made 3-pointers. Tommi Olson added a game-high five assists in the contest and improved her national-leading assist-to-turnover mark to a 5.67 clip. Olson also ranks 10th in the league averaging 3.4 assists per contest. Olson has six games this season where she hasn’t committed a turnover and over her last six games, has 18 assists and just one turnover.
UW continues to impress on the defensive end, holding opponents to just 56 points per game on the year, a mark that ranks second-best in the conference. The Cowgirls also lead the country in fewest fouls per game at just 11 a contest.
SCOUTING UNLV
UNLV leads the Mountain West in scoring at nearly 75.7 points per game in 2021-22. The Lady Rebels are led by reigning MW Freshman of the Year Desi-Rae Young who is averaging a team-high 16.8 points and 6.7 rebounds per game on nearly 53-percent shooting from the field. As a team, UNLV ranks second in the league with a 44.3-percent shooting mark from the floor and also shoots nearly 35-perent from 3-point range. The Lady Rebels allow opponents to score at a 65.1-point clip.
Essence Booker and Nneka Obiazor also score in double figures so far this season for the Lady Rebels, averaging 14.3 and 10.5 points per game, respectively this season. Alyssa Durazo-Frescas leads the team with 23 3-pointers this season and is shooting a team-high 43.4 percent from beyond-the-arc. Booker leads the squad with 23 steals this season while Keyan Wilfred has a team-best eight blocks.
UNLV is led by second-year Head Coach Lindy La Rocque, who was named the Mountain West Coach of the Year in 2020-21.
SERIES HISTORY AGAINST UNLV
Wyoming leads the all-time series against UNLV, 27-25. Friday marks the sixth-straight meeting with the Lady Rebels in Las Vegas. The Cowgirls split at UNLV to begin conference play last season, while bouncing the Lady Rebels from the Mountain West Tournament in the 2021 quarterfinals. UW is 3-2 over the past three seasons in Vegas against UNLV.